MAR
2014
2014
Wednesday 19TH
posted by Morning Star in Features
Teenager SEAMUS JENNINGS on Benn's unique appeal to young people
"Make, teach and keep socialists." This was the aim of Tony Benn when he was selected as a parliamentary candidate in 1950, and it occupied him for the rest of his life.
I say "life" because to use the word "career" would be to misunderstand Benn's unique outlook.
He recognised politics lived and breathed beyond the halls of Westminster. That one served, not ruled.
To simply call him a politician would also be inaccurate. It is a word in Britain today which conjures up airbrushed public school boys, populists by virtue of Desert Island Discs. A cabal of careerists.
Benn was the reluctant peer, Viscount Stansgate - a title he soon renounced after a political struggle to enable him to drop it.
This initial swipe at the Establishment would be the first of many campaigns for constitutional reform and political freedoms.
Always rejecting the idea that the left should simply "manage capitalism," he vehemently criticised Labour's move to the right not only during his time in Westminster but also when Tony Blair scuttled into No 10.
When he said he would stand down from Parliament in 1999 Benn signalled the beginning of a new political life, when most in his position would have assumed they were in their twilight years, with the words "I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so."
Becoming the figurehead of the Stop the War Coalition, he campaigned against the invasion of Iraq, and later Afghanistan, with his typical ferocity.
There is a photo of Benn taken three years ago at a rally in London's Hyde Park during the TUC's March for the Alternative protest.
He almost looks like a man from another era, wearing a waistcoat with his signature pipe in hand, planted among a thoroughly modern crowd. Was he out of touch? Of course not. It shows a man who appealed to all generations, a timeless icon.
I originally intended to write about the work Benn did to engage my generation - however this was a man who didn't have to try to inspire young people.
Politicians today vie for our attention by making clumsy populist statements. David Cameron was rightly admonished by Morrissey for claiming fondness for The Smiths. Their music - forged in the disaffection of the Thatcherite era - fought against the kind of politics the Prime Minister propagates today.
Benn had no need to forgo his pipe or use his record collection to give the impression of humanity. His politics and ideals spoke for themselves. They were intrinsically compassionate, liberal and popular in sentiment.
However much the Tories and Ukip try to appeal to the most debased aspects of the British character - whether it be insularism, anti-immigrant or any other Daily Mail-inspired bigotry - it is important to remember that most of us feel only love and respect for other human beings.
Benn's fight for irrefutable freedoms in the face of bigotry and backwardness is instantly appealing to young people yet to be fatigued by the narrow political reality in our country.
As he often reminded us, those that had previously challenged the powers that be, from early Christians to Suffragettes, had been treated as both dreamers and extremists.
"Bennism" was a term coined in the 1970s for what was called Benn's "loony" brand of left-wing opinions.
The manner in which he was vilified as "the most dangerous man in Britain" by other politicians shook the Labour Party over the following decade.
But Benn was not a "loon," a naive dreamer or a political extremist. His dedication to challenging the Establishment is an occupation often associated with people my age. It is seen as adolescent, a student fad soon to be beaten out of you by the harsh realities of the "real world."
If Benn lived in a fantasy, a madman to believe the things he did, then I am profoundly worried about what the definition of sanity is accepted to be. To quote the great man himself, "Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself."
